Optimization and Simulation
Companies are increasingly confronted with business-critical decisions whose complexity exceeds human judgment. Modern optimization and simulation techniques provide software tools for machine-based decision support.
Overview
The economic environment of today's companies is characterized by high cost pressure, shrinking margins, intensified international competition, growing customer expectations and increasingly stringent regulations and business conditions. Strategic and operational decisions at all management levels are becoming more and more complex due to the increasing amount of data, interrelations, constraints and target criteria to be taken into account. It is no longer possible to solve business challenges with experience and common sense alone, and to adequately assess the consequences of decisions without software support.
Quantitative models and methods from operations research and operations management provide decision support for complex business processes. With the help of mathematical optimization models, strategic and operational decision problems are precisely formulated in order to subsequently analyze and optimize them with suitable solution methods, using both exact algorithms and heuristic approximation techniques.
In practice, different action scenarios often have to be evaluated against each other, whose operational and financial consequences are difficult to estimate and depend in a complex way on the particular conditions. Simulation methods can be used to create computer-based models of operational systems and processes, which enable the evaluation of scenarios through virtual experiments and "what-if" analysis.
A wide range of optimization methods is applied in our customer projects, in particular linear and integer programming, combinatorial optimization, convex and nonlinear optimization, dynamic programming and control theory, heuristics, metaheuristics as well as queueing theory, Markov processes and stochastic optimization.
Selected Projects
- Automated Airport Staff Scheduling
Employee scheduling at airports is a complex and cost-intensive operational task. For Swissport, the largest airport ground handler worldwide, an optimization software for automated staff scheduling has been developed. -
Flight Network Simulation at Swiss International Air Lines
Flight network operations at Swiss International Air Lines are becoming increasingly challenging. An innovative flight network simulation tool has been developed to support the complex planning and control tasks.